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From: "Knut W. Barde" <>
Subject: [Scotch-Irish] Ireland 1729
Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 22:53:06 -0700
References: <200105101247.AA448659494@mail.fea.net>


Jonathan Swift's
"A Modest Proposal" speaks volumes about conditions in Ireland in 1729, and
gives us some ideas about the suffering of the poor. It touches on issues
of emigration, religious conflicts, and conflicts with England, all
presented with a wonderful sense of seriousness and irony.

Whenever we moderns say oh those folks back then just weren't enlightened
enough to think of social/political issues and human rights in a "modern"
way, we need to read people like Swift, to realize that the sensitivities
to the issues of a just society were well developed and available. The
fact that the political systems failed to respond was not inevitable fate,
but the result of conscious decisionmaking that intentionally ignored the
plight of the poor and downtrodden.

One needs only to look at the Quakers in PA to realize that there were real
live options to the $1,000 per Indian scalp rewards that the SI clamored
for. I have read they dug up dead Indians just so they could get the
scalp money.


To the extent the early immigrants were something other than fortune
seekers of the same ilk as the California and Alaska goldrush opportunists,
but came for reasons of escaping religious persecution, one would think
they must have had a sense of justice and injustice, at least as regards
their own position. When that sense failed to be applied to the treatment
of the Indians, especially with the Quaker example at hand, one must
wonder whether the term self-righteousness wouldn't be more appropriate
than justice.

The site is
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~benjamin/316kfall/316ktexts/swift.html

Knut


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